This year I diverted a lot of free time from other hobbies and focused on one project; something you might think a complete waste of time. This year, and I do mean the entire year, I made a haunted house. The following are the details—and my attempt at justifying such behaviour.

Why, you might ask—must a blog about rationality, reason, skepticism, art and astronomy—be so encumbered with posts about… Halloween?

“I used to come here for science, or at least pretty pictures, guldangit! Why is this fool posting stuff about zombies and ghouls that I don’t believe in! I HATE this Brad Blogspeed!”

Whoa. Easy partner. Maybe I should explain my Halloween obsession a little before you write this blog off forever. Perhaps by the end I’ll be able to convince you of the following: that this spooky project was indeed my first ever cross-media art exhibit—something I’ve wanted to do forever—oh-so cleverly disguised as a haunted house.

Travel through time in a steampunk inspired machine; visit dinosaurs, Nazi Germany, and be stalked by Jack the Ripper… all inside the garage of some very creative twins!

Pay attention now. You’re about to see something truly unique.

The other day my friend Paul Clinton turned me on to a fantastic bit of DIY wizardry, and I just have to share. Ladies and gentlemen, witness perhaps the single greatest live-action horror show ever to be built into somebody’s garage: Machine. Read the rest of this entry

This little video brought a nostalgic smile to my face this morning, while reminding me of how fulfilling the creative process can be.

I’ve been a fan of Angelo Badalamenti’s musical compositions for many years, after hearing them in David Lynch’s silver screen adaptation of the Twin Peaks saga: ‘Fire Walk with Me‘. (The show was fine, but I loved the movie) I listened to that soundtrack over and over again back in my post-college days, while everyone around me was rockin’ it out to Smash Mouth and TheCranberries. (shudder and double-shudder)

Holy crap, I have almost nothing to say. The level of talent on display below, all by Belgian concept artist Jonas DeRo, is the kind of work that makes me want to never call myself an “artist” again.

Concept painters have to create entire world, sometimes with just a single image. They don’t just design the look of a specific scene, but they lend the mood to an entire film. Jonas has done something similar to me today; he’s imposed a mood on the rest of my day — that being jealousy.

Have a gander at this talented fellow, ladies and gents. I discovered Yuri Laptev on Behance today, and I just had to share his collection of beautiful work with y’all.

I’m normally not big on surrealism, (if that’s what this is – I’m not also not big on art theory) but Yuri’s work is just so creative, so interesting, that it arrests my attention. I also appreciate his mastery of watercolours, a medium that frightens me to no end. He’s able to control the paints for very subtle yet powerful effects. Excellent work.

Hello folks! Hope all is well with each of you. Sorry for my absence, but I’ve had a lot of Halloween stuff to do, especially with this past weekend’s trip to the Canadian Haunted Attractions Conference, and some prop building projects I’ll share with you soon.

In the meantime, here’s a very short but gorgeous piece of animation by Saskia Kretzschmann that you simply must see. Saskia’s use of only solid black and white, (no gray gradients) is an extremely challenging way to do animation, because at every moment composition is vitally important, and yet she seems to have mastered the technique. I’ll let her describe it herself after sharing the quote that inspited her.

When I was a kid I used to draw all the time, and naturally everybody encouraged me to pursue it as a career. “Nah”, I’d say. “Drawing comics might be cool, but it’d probably stop being fun and just feel like work.”

Nobody has suggested that March 26th become a national holiday as a result, but it is the birthday of this blog. The following is a brief history of how this site came to be, and what’s happened since; along with a few thoughts on where it’s going. I apologize if it all seems a little masturbatory, but I wanted to mark the event with at least a smidgen of reflection. You’ll notice a number of links throughout, most of which point to articles I’ve written in the past. Sort of like a sit-com clip show, get it?

On finding your voice

So I’ve been at this blogging business for a couple of years now, and while I can’t be sure what sensation the experience has left in your mouths, at least personally, I think I’ve acquired a taste for it.

This blog began on March 26th, 2010 with a completely innocuous post, (image below) and no particular agenda in mind. At the time Posterous was a brand-new service, designed more for sharing pictures and video rather than blogging, so I thought I’d give it a test run. There was no custom URL, no title, and no theme. Yet hiding somewhere were the seeds of what the site would eventually become.

Sorry I haven’t been around folks. I’m sure it’s been an emptier internet without me, right guys? Guys?

I’ll fall back on the work excuse, and leave it at that. However I wanted to whip a little content at you fine people, lest you go find some other blog written by a fat know-it-all. Can’t have that.

Although I have to be brief with the words today, I’m compensating by offering a whole heap of pictures. These are illustrations from Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms of Nature), a lithographic book by German biologist Ernst Haeckel. Originally published in sets up until 1904, it came with about 100 illustrations based on his sketches.

Once again, I’m writing about stars, except this time they’re made up of more carbon than hydrogen.

That’s because ‘stars’ are the artistic focus of today’s illustrator, über-talented Stanley Chow. When looking below, you’ll notice that Stanley obviously likes drawing celebrities; and even though I don’t normally pay attention to Hollywood’s jet-set, Stanley’s work creates an opportunity for a fun game of “name that face”.